Saturday, May 22, 2010

Much has happened since I last posted upon the final episode of Dollhouse. Notably, Whedon was tapped to direct the film version of The Avengers (the Iron Man one, not the Emma Peel one. I adore Robert Downey, Jr., but I don't want to see him in a leather catsuit), which has fans buzzing about what he'll do with a big-budget movie. The casting is not yet complete, but I'll admit the possibilities are tantalizing.

Also, Slayage 4 draws near. In about ten days, I'll be leaving for the fourth biennial conference on the Whedonverses. I'm delivering one of the keynote speeches at this one - I'm the Sunday one, if you look at the draft schedule. It's an opportunity that has me both thrilled and a little cowed. The writing of the speech is going all right (I think) but there's still some work to do there and summer school starts next week, so I'm likely to be quite busy. But I love this conference! I've gone to the last three - missed the first one, drat! - and the energy of the participants is palpable. Such a wide range of subjects and approaches! Details on the conference have hit the local paper and I imagine there will be more press coverage; let's see if they paint us as whackos or as scholars (of course, "whacko scholar" is an option as well.)

More on that as it draws closer and I'll be posting from the conference itself.

The other big news is that I won't be going to this conference (held in St. Augustine, FL) alone. Long story, so let's just say that Adventuress has embarked on her most exciting adventure ever - I found someone whose quirks and oddities dovetailed nicely with my own and we married at the beginning of May! (Yay, throw rice, blow noisemakers!) There were no bridesmaids in apple-green taffeta as Anya wanted in "Hell's Bells" and it was quite a lovely (and very small) ceremony. St. Augustine will be somewhat of a delayed honeymoon for us.

And yes, he'll be presenting at the conference as well. Obsessions should be shared, I always think!

Right now, I'm a little over halfway through my super-fast summer film class. Personally, I would prefer a slower-paced class spread o...

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K. Dale Koontz

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Who?

K. Dale Koontz may have watched too much television as a child. She learned to count via Sesame Street and first learned that genres could cross-pollinate through M*A*S*H. When she discovered Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the die was cast. In 2008, McFarland published her book Faith and Choice in the Work of Joss Whedon which focused on themes such as redemption, choice, and consequences in Whedon's work up to that point. (She's fairly sure Volume 2 could be written to include Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and The Avengers.) She is a founding member of the Whedon Studies Association (a great group of people, but don't mention Twilight. Just sayin'). She has presented original work on the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse, Kitty Pryde, and Japanese anime. In 2014, she and co-author Ensley F. Guffey worked with ECW Press to publish the critically-acclaimed Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad. Her most recent project was to team again with Ensley and ECW to publish A Dream Given Form, which is the only guide to all the canonical works in the Babylon 5 universe. That book is currently available for preorder and will be released in September of 2017. Dale is available for speaking engagements and only occasionally uses puppets in her presentations.

What?

I have long been interested in storytelling - how we do it, why we do it, and what happens when we mix things up. This interest might be the result of being born and raised in the American South, a region that has long celebrated the involved story over the quick answer. Television - the good stuff, anyway - does this brilliantly. Far from being film's red-headed tacky cousin, good TV lets characters and relationships build slowly and often mixes up genres, so horror is next door to humor and fantasy rubs shoulders with procedurals. This blog focuses on both the "good stuff" being broadcast that catches my fancy (with a special emphasis on Babylon 5, since that's the book that's in the process of being written right now) as well as film. The films are usually new releases being watched for TV19's weekly Meet Me at the Movies, although I reserve the right to veer off into classics and under-appreciated gems as well. Older posts cover what my introduction to film class was up to - currently, I'm not teaching that course, but who knows what the future may hold.